tax return, yay!

Ah taxes.

For some, it’s a nightmare time of deadlines and meeting with accountants.  For people like me and Donovan, it’s a time of ease.  After living as cheaply as possible all year, we FINALLY have the money to fix the car, get “toys”, or buy new clothing that is needed for us or the kids.

Growing up I never realized that taxes were such a big deal until one year I ended up owing on state taxes the first time.  Living in Nevada, I’d never dealt with state taxes before.  Trying to understand the return was horrible, like handing over a physics textbook to an elementary school student.  I’d just gone through a nasty separation and now I had to PAY state taxes?  Other times that I was eligible for a state refund, the state I was in didn’t have the funds to give to it’s residents.

Now that I’m older and not living in a state that has an income tax, things are easier.  True, the first year without Donovan the government ended up seizing both our returns for student loans.  I was pretty upset by that.  I hadn’t realized they could or would do that, and we’d needed that money desperately; Donovan wanted to come home after he was done with his training and the van wasn’t running yet.

Both of those things happened.  Donovan got a loan to pay for his plane ticket, and I scrimped and saved to get the van running.  This year’s return situation is no different than last year – it’s pretty much spoken for already.  Fix the van, move to a house, carpet repair, and water proof slip covers are just a few things that are on the list.

So many would be quick to say that I need to go back to work.  The problem is that I don’t have the experience or availability to get a job in Las Vegas’s market. Add to that the fact that I’d be working to pay for child care and that Nevada has highest unemployment numbers in the United States and I, like so many other job seekers, am screwed.  If I could move to a state with better numbers, I would, but it comes down to the expense of moving to a different state and figuring out where to live and who would drive the moving truck.